Searched! Dear Listener, I am calling you this, because this way, no one will know who you are.  I think that my ancestors would of called you a "diary," but somehow that doesn't sound right.  Listener does, though.  After all, that's what you'll be doing, right?  Listening to me so that I can tell you my story. You'll never believe why I'm telling you this, though.  I was Searched!  Isn't that amazing?  I'll tell you exactly how it happened, and although I can't write all too neatly yet, for the weyrharper is still teaching me, I want to record it just as it was! I can remember waking up, just like any other morning.  I stretched, then reached back and tried to untangle my hair.  It was getting worse every day; if only I had something to cut it off with!  My hair just keeps on getting longer, and it keeps on getting more tangled, too.  I can remember combing my fingers through it hopelessly, and I don't know why I even tried, because nothing worked. Soon, though, I realized that I should of already been working out in the runner's stables.  It was my new assignment, and as much as I hated the manure pile, I absoloutely love grooming the runners!  There was a new one that day, a beautiful Appaloosa gelding named "Odabil."  He was so very sweet, and had to be around seventeen hands high!  I'm going to draw a picture of him soon to put in here, I've got to let you know how beautiful he was!  Odabil was here because he'd skinned himself up coming down the final stretch at one of the races, and had scars everywhere.  I was in charge of tending those sores. I remember that Riand left me in charge of exercising Odabil, and he moved so gracefully.  You wouldn't believe it, his strides were perfect!  We rode for around a candlemark or so, and then I groomed him quickly and fed all of the other horses.  "Get back to the Hold, girl, they want all of the people between twelve and twenty-one turns old...  Don't ask me why." I knew, though.  The only reason why they'd want people between the ages of 12 and 21 was for a Search.  I was about to ask Riand if there were dragons, but kept my mouth shut.  He used to be a bronzerider, you know, only his bronze was killed in a mating flightly when another bronze started fighting, literally, with him for the gold.  I knew that it would hurt him if I asked, so I decided not to.  He was, after all, one of the Lord Holder's closest friends, and I didn't want to get on his bad side.  "Yu-Yes, sir," I said, and quickly finished feeding Odabil, then bolted to the hall, trying not to let the blisters on my feet re-open, and I kept my elbows tucked into my sides, because if I moved them too much, the scabs on my shoulderblades would re-open, and that wasn't fun at all. Listener, you probably want to know why I had all these scabs.  Would you believe that it was because I accidentaly let the bread over-bake?  So I got seven lashes for the burnt bread and two more for the fact that I tried to say it wasn't worth it.  Nine lashes.  It hurts horribly, I can tell you. But I still got there fast, and was amazed to see a dragon, a huge green one, with her rider standing next to her.  "This is Searchrider Anya with the green Sveiketh," The steward Quintil told me.  "Now then, go line up with the others."  I stood there for a second, and he issued a strong punch to my back, which opened up the most tender of the scabs and sent me flying across the pavement, and staring at the riding boots of... I groaned.  Riding boots obviously belonged to the greenrider, and now I was nothing short of toast.  I could already hear the Lord Holder's voice ringing in my ears.  "Ten lashes for disobediance, seventeen more for embaressing the Hold in front of the Weyr." I bit back a tear as I heard the whip unfolding behind me, finding its mark three times.  I could not put up with twenty-four more lashes, I always wondered how I could put up with seven at a time.  "Stop!" A voice rang out, and I lifted my head up slightly to see the greenrider glaring at the Lord Holder. "I may be a greenrider, sir, and you may be a Lord Holder, but that doesn't mean that this won't go into my report!" She said angrily, ripping the whip out of the man's grasp and throwing it to the floor.  "You think that your drudges like this any more than you would, becuase they're servants?"  At this time the woman knelt to help me to my feet, asking me if I was alright. And then, she said, "Sveiketh thinks that this girl would make a good Candidate.  Are you going to keep her, whip her, and starve her, or let the poor thing go?  After all, dragonriders tend to go to holds where other dragons have Impressed to find Candidates more often, and if this girl Impresses...  What's here name?" "Fhandi," Someone said from the knot of people clustered around me, and I looked up to see Ainmin, one of my best friends, saying that.  I grinned at him, and he smiled weakly back, then hurried out to finish with his duties. "Fhandi," The woman repeated, standing up and extending her hand down to me to grab and help me up.  "Proper dragonrider's name, not Kevin like we get sometimes with males." A proper dragonrider's name. All that I can tell you is that was the most important phrase that I've ever heard in my life.  Well, unless you count the next three words that Anya said, for I think that those surpass any that anyone's ever said. "You've been Searched."  And suddenly, I knew that I was going to leave Thanbrook Hold, and I was going to the weyr. I'd been Searched! Back to the Table of Contents Back to Fhandi's page Chapter Two